Ken Knowlton was an engineer, computer scientist and artist who helped pioneer the science and art of computer graphics and made many of the first computer-generated pictures, portraits and movies. He passed away at the age of 92.
Rick Knowlton said the cause of his father's death was not clear.
Bell Labs was a future-focused division of the Bell telephone conglomerate that was among the world's leading research labs. He decided to make movies using computer-generated graphics after learning about the new machine that could print images onto film.
He said in an interview that he could take pictures with letters on the screen or lines on the screen. Is a movie something you would like to see?
He believed he had created the first computer programming language for computer animation called BEFLIX. He made an animated movie using this language. A computer technique for the production of animated movies is explained in a 10-minute film.
The BEFLIX language was the only one used by a single person, but the ideas behind this technology would eventually change the movie business.
Computer graphics were used in feature films such as "The Last Starfighter" and "Tron" in the 1980's. Pixar, a studio in Northern California, released a feature film called "Toy Story" in 1995. Computer-generated imagery is used in almost every movie and TV show today.
Ted Nelson is a computer science pioneer and philosopher who wrote about the work of Dr. Knowlton. Every movie was made on a digital machine.
On June 6, 1931, Kenneth Charles Knowlton was born in Springville, New York.
After graduating from high school a year early, he went to Cornell University to study engineering and physics. He went to Cornell for a masters degree in X-ray camera building.
He met his future wife at Cornell and they joined the Quakers. They traveled to work camps for the poor in El Salvadoran and Mexico after he finished his master's degree, where he contracted the disease. For the rest of his life, he wore a leg brace.
Dr. Knowlton's interest in computers began at Cornell in the mid-1950s, when room-size machines operated via punch cars and magnetic tape reels were just beginning to arrive in government labs. He joined the project as a PhD student after reading about a group at the Massachusetts Institute Technology that wanted to build computer technology that could translate between languages. Noam Chomsky and Marvin Minsky were his thesis advisers.
Dr. Knowlton was able to create detailed images by stringing together dots, letters, numbers and other symbols. The symbol's brightness was the sole criterion for choosing it. His computer programs could change the brightness of their symbols to make them look like flowers or faces.
He used the same techniques to apply to portraits and other images. A computer-generated mosaic of a nude woman was hung on the wall of his office as a joke in the 1960's.
Edward E. David, Jr., the Bell Labs executive director of communications research, was not amused by their antics. The portrait was put on display in Robert Rauschenberg's New York City loft in the fall of 1967.
The New York Times included a picture of a nude woman in a study about computer nude. It was thought to be the first nude to be printed in the New York Times. The picture was part of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art that looked at the end of the mechanical age.
Bell Labs was where Dr. Knowlton worked until 1982, experimenting with everything from computer-generated music to technologies that helped the blind. In the late 1980's, he joined Wang Laboratories, where he helped develop a personal computer that allowed users to use voice and digital pen strokes.
In 2008, after retiring from tech research, he joined a magician and inventor named Mark Setteducati in creating a jigsaw puzzle called Ji Ga Zo, which could be rearranged to look like anyone's face. Mr. Setteducati said that he had a mathematical mind and a good sense of aesthetic.
In addition to his son Rick, Dr. Knowlton has two other sons, Kenneth and David, as well as a brother and a sister. He had two daughters from his first marriage and a second wife.
Several well-known artists collaborated with Mr. Knowlton while he was at Bell Labs. He believed he was an engineer who helped others create art.
He began to create and sell art of his own, using dominoes, dice, seashells and other materials. Engineers collaborating with artists becomes more than engineers.
He wrote in 2001 that they become more complete humans if they understand that all behavior comes from indefensible emotions, values and drives. Some eventually become an artist.
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